Outspoken DA MP Dianne Kohler Barnard has found herself entangled in a nasty racist storm after reposting a Facebook post invoking the spirit of apartheid-era leader PW Botha.
Kohler Barnard faces being sanctioned by the DA for bringing the party into disrepute for sharing the post, which stated: “Please come back PW Botha”.
In what seemed a bad day for the DA on Thursday, the official opposition moved swiftly to revoke the membership of controversial AbaThembu King Buyelekhaya Dalindyebo after the Supreme Court of Appeal (SCA) upheld his criminal assault, arson and kidnapping convictions.
To make matters worse, it also emerged on Thursday that an appeal against the disciplinary steps taken against another DA MP, known to The Star, is under way.
Kohler Barnard’s reposting of the message raised the ire of the DA, with the party scrambling to do damage control.
Her disciplinary hearing has yet to be scheduled, but the charges were drafted on the same day the party’s police spokeswoman apologised for, and deleted, the two-week-old Facebook repost.
Apart from its “Please come back PW Botha” message, the post made a commentary condemning the second suspension of the KwaZulu-Natal Hawks boss Johan Booysen.
The ANC in Parliament didn’t mince its words when it commented on the post, calling for the firing of the “apartheid advocate Kohler Barnard” as an MP.
“If the DA is serious about ridding itself of its public reputation as a refuge for racists and white supremacists still longing for the return of apartheid rule, it must not merely distance itself from its senior MP’s conduct but expel her from the party and Parliament,” said the ANC chief whip’s spokesman Moloto Mothapo.
It was the second strongest stance taken by the ANC against ill-disciplined DA MPs in recent months. In June, ANC chief whip Stone Sizani reported DA MP Archibold Figlan to the joint ethics committee for further investigation after his party found him guilty of sexual harassment, but did not suspend or fire him.
Figlan was found guilty after forcing a DA employee to touch his private parts, but his loss of membership was suspended pending various penalties, including paying R10 000 to a non-governmental organisation.
As the storm over Kohler Barnard brewed on Thursday, DA federal executive chairman James Selfe confirmed the federal legal commission was drafting charges of bringing the party into disrepute against her. “She will then have the opportunity to address the panel,” Selfe said.
Kohler Barnard is the first MP to fall foul of the revised and tightened DA social media policy, which was reviewed after a number of ill-advised tweets by DA public representatives.
Selfe said all representatives had been made aware of the tightened social media policy.
However, he dismissed the ANC’s response as “hysterical”, saying that unlike the governing party, which moved only in accordance with a person’s level of political connectedness, the DA’s disciplinary action was “pragmatic and very swift”.
Meanwhile, the DA on Thursday appeared to rue the day it embraced Dalindyebo among its rank-and-file members after the king’s widely publicised fallout with the ANC.
The DA revoked his membership, moments after the SCA sentenced him to 12 years for various charges, including grievous bodily harm, arson, kidnapping and attempting to defeat the ends of justice.
“The constitution guarantees equal treatment under the law. The appellant (Dalindyebo) behaved shamefully and abused his position as king,” stated the SCA.
“The period of imprisonment he is to serve is no more than just deserts for what, given his position of authority, are after all particularly heinous crimes,” stated the court, adding he’d been lucky not to get a heavier sentence on some of the charges.
The SCA agreed with the Mthatha High Court’s description of Dalindyebo as “a king who ruled as a merciless despot” and who was a poor witness.
“His behaviour was all the more deplorable because the victims of his reign of terror were the vulnerable rural poor, who were dependent upon him,” stated the SCA.
The case relates to incidents in 1995 and 1996 on Dalindyebo’s farm Tyalara near Mthatha when he disciplined his subjects. Their homes were burnt down and the families evicted.
Three men who were accused of housebreaking and rape were so badly assaulted that one died and another became mentally impaired. A fourth man who was accused of murder was assaulted and died, and the dead man’s father was ordered not to report the killing to the police.
By late on Thursday, Dalindyebo was still free, but it’s understood he was required to report to Correctional Services within 24 hours.
Although Dalindyebo’s legal team managed to get the SCA to overturn his main conviction of culpable homicide, thus reducing his effective sentence from 15 to 12 years, he fired his 12th lawyer hours after the judgment. – The Star